'marxists' Retreat in Mozambique

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"The word "proletariat' has been degraded to a mere phrase. To make this phrase effective it was necessary to describe the petty bourgeoisie as proletarians so that in practice it was the petty bourgeoisie and not the proletarians who were represented. The actual revolutionary process had to be replaced by revolutionary catchwords".

Frelimo forces: armed struggle not enough to secure socialism In a speech to the nation recently Mozambique's so-called 'Marxist' President Samora Machel said:

"On September 25, 1964 we declared war on the foreign enemy -Portuguese colonialism. Here today March 18, 1980 we declare war on the internal enemy. We are going to flush them out by the end of the year"

The "internal enemy", according to Machel are the:

"opportunists and petty bourgeois radicals who have encouraged ultra democracy and leftism in an effort to break down authority, create confusion and harm the revolution"

In Africa, where reformism finds its expression in the petty bourgeois nationalism of the national liberation movements, Mozambique's Machel has montar o most mastar at miloti. proveu & pastillasier di suustituting revolutionary catchwords for the actual revolutionary process.

Under the pressure of mounting class struggle, it is not only the Stalinists but all manner of reformists who invoke the language of Marxism to placate and confuse the revolutionary masses as to the real content of their treacherous class-collaborationist politics.

The neo-colonial regimes throughout Africa have repeatedly shown that, having once come to power, the petty bourgeoisie is incapable of wielding it independently. It is compelled either to surrender it to the working class if it is strong enough to seize it, or to become a gendarme of imperialism in the region, with the big bourgeoisie wielding real power.

In Mozambique, whilst it was once the workers and peasants who looked to Machel's Frelimo party as a weapon of struggle against imperialism, it is now imperialism which looks to Machel's state bureaucracy as a weapon to attack the working class and establish the control necessary for profitable capitalist accumulation.

Trotsky captured the gist of the process that unfolded in Mozambique when le wrote:

"At first one gets the impression that the petty bourgeoisie with sword in hand is turning upon the bourgeois regime, but its revolt ends with it handing over to the big bourgeoisie, through its own chiefs, the power it had seized by travelling the road of bloodshed... The deeper had been the illusion of petty bourgeois socialism and patriotism and the more impetuously they had been mobilised in conditions of economic and parliamentary impasse, the more brazenly, cynically and "suddenly" would the victorious chief of this movement fall down on his knees before the big bourgeoisie with the request that they "crown" him."

(1932 Writings, pp160/62)

The imperialists, anxious to stem the burgeoning mass struggles in an area as critically vital to their interests of MARX Southern Allica. did not hesitate to "crown" Machel.

No sooner had British imperialism's Lord Soames-with the active connivance of Machelsucceeded in installing ZANU (PF's) Mugabe at the head of the capitalist state in Zimbabwe, than he turned his attention to countries bordering Zimbabwe, in particular, Mozambique. Mozambique has remained, in the five years of neo-colonial indeperdence, a vassal of imperialism and primarily of South African imperialism.

The Big 5' imperialist powers have been reluctant to really extend their interests in Mozambique as long as the war in Zimbabwe threatened to completely destabilise the whole region.

Reliable

However, in the temporary breathing space opened up by the halting of the Zimbabwean war and with Machel having proved himself a reliable imperialist agent in helping force through the Lancaster House agreement, finance capital is seeking to consolidate its hold over Mozambique, mainly through the support of capital.

The depth of the crisis wracking world capitalism has forced the imperialist powers to tighten their control over the backward countries.

The export of capital is crucial for imperialism 'to counteract the effects of the crisis of profitability by expanding foreign trade and exerting still more direct control over prices and • supplies of raw materials in the backward countries.

Machel's ruling bureaucracy have demonstrated, in their most recent opportunist manoeuvres, that they will do all in their power to further imperialist interests in the region.

Following Lord Soames' four days of secret negotiations with the Mozambiquan leadership in Maputo, Machel has, in several major speeches, combined declarations of war on working class militants with overtures to imperialism to strengthen its hold over Mozambique and her people.

As part of the process of flushing out worker militants and extending control over the working class,. Machel declared in Match that the bureaucratic hierarchies through which workers are controlled should be made more rigid and authoritarian.

End egalitarianism

He demanded an end to "informality", "the principle of egalitarianism " and "the practice of calling everyone comrade" while revising Frelimo's much vaunted concept of "People's Power" to mean:

"The establishnent of the authority and prestige of the director as representative of People's Power so that it is not the workers collective. 1 hat takes decisions but the dire :tor who decides".

In April, shortly Samora Machel: "Well it may you through"

Down with capitalism' sign at Maputo airport was removed, a delegation of 30 capitalists from 23 multi-national firms arrived for a four-day meeting with the Mozambiquan fledgling bourgeoisie.

The decisions taken have remained secret, but after the meeting the head of the delegation and former agricultural secretary in the Kennedy cabinet, Orville Freeman, summed up the tone of the discussion:

«We told them bluntly that they must understand that we are primarily interested in making profits. We told them that we want to be able to take our profits out, to bring in experts and did not want to be stifled by restrictive red tape"

The bourgeois authorities in Mozambique described the meeting as "very successful" and made a point of allaying the imperialists' fears over the repatriation of profits.

As if to prove their capabilities to imperialism, Machel immediately announced that the 50 or so shops and small businesses, nationalised after beautiful bottle, their Portuguese owners fled when Frelimo came to power would, along with considerable state aid, be handed back to their previous owners if they returned or given to aspirant petty capitalists.

At the same time, In a further sop to imperialism, he sacked his three cabinet ministers most sympathetic to the Kremlin Stalinists and, in a cabinet reshuffle, brought in eight new white ministers to bolster his policy of increased foreign investment and capitalist initiative in Mozambique.

When Sergio Viera, President of the Bank of Mozambique, cabinét minister and leading Frelimo ideologue, returned from Western Europe last month with pledges of over $200 million of investment, he said that:

"You must not look at the present offensive as a turning point for us, but merely as a new phase in our revolutionary process."

in reality the 'offensive' is. of course, a new phase in the imperialist-sponsored counterrevolutionary process Mozambique.

Under conditions of rotting capitalism internationally, the extension of capitalist developMachel ment in Mozambique is the perpetuation of capitalist decay.

For profitable investment, finance capital requires massive technological investment (which can only exacerbate the already chronic unemployment in Mozambique) and the cheapening of the labour power of the Mozambiquan workers who already struggle to survive on starvation wages.

Thus imperialism must both develop the backwardness of capitalist social relations (by driving labour powereven further below its value) at the same time as it develops the most advanced forms of capitalist production (latest technology imported from the advanced capitalist countries).

In a country where trade unions are illegal and strikes are outlawed, the material conditions facing the working class and poor peasantry are barbaric.

Out of a population of 12 million, 90% live in rural areas where subsistence production has to be supplemented by food imports and the agricultural production is less than it was at independence five years ago.

Reservoir

The objective reality of the situation is that the poor peasantry, the overwhelming majority of the rural population, constitute a vast reservoir of labour-primarily for the South African gold-mines which employ 30% of Mozambique's biggest export commodity, labour power.

The crisis in agricultural production has led to thousands of people flooding to the cities in a bid to stave off starvation.

Maputo, the capital of Mozambique, now has a population of 1.2 million whereas it was 500,000 under Portuguese rule.

Production down

But industrial production is still lower than at the time of independence.

With a balance of payments deficit of £100 million, amounting to more than the country's total exports in 1978, the econmy is propped up by foreign aid.

The Mozambiquan masses in the cities, face no prospect of employment, a virtual total absence of housing and social services, a chronic food crisis (which has led to hugely inflated prices for the most basic commodities) and a repressive bureaucratic regime which spent 26% of the total budget on defence in 1979.

They are bound to move into struggle to defend their very lives as the crisis sharpens.

"Socialism"

While the Mozambiquan regime continues to perpetuate the myth that "socialism" will be constructed on the basis of the development of agricultural production, Marxists point to the fact that the only material basis for socialism can be the development of industrial production capable of reorganising agriculture along mechanised lines.

For this to be done, the productive forces have to be released from the stranglehold of capitalist social relations created and perpetuated by imperialism.

For Marxists, the absence of an economic basis for the independent construction of socialism in Mozambique does not mean that the socialist revolution is impossible.

It means that the workers' struggle is international; that the development of the struggle in Mozambique and the building of a workers' government able to carry through massive programme of socialist development will require not only the complete nationalisation of the means of production under workers management but also the practical solidarity and aid of the international working class. The socialist revolution in Mozambique can triumph finally only as a in the world revolution.

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